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Cartes-de-visite (photographs)


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    Cabinet photographs

    Visual Materials

    Approximately 2,000 cabinet photographs, which are larger than the carte-de-visite format. They are generally albumen prints mounted on cardstock, measuring 6 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches.

    photCL 581

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    Carl Mautz collection of cartes-de-visite and cabinet photographs from the Western United States and Canada

    Visual Materials

    A collection of approximately 7,000 cartes-de-visite and cabinet photographs, almost entirely portraits of ordinary people in the American West, photographed between approximately 1860 and 1910. The photographs represent the work of thousands of commercial photographers operating in every state west of the Mississippi, plus Wisconsin, which the collector considered a western state given its frontier role in the migration of photographers from the East to West. The collection includes 23 states and territories, including Hawaii, and a few portraits from British Columbia and Western Canada. There are a relatively small number of photographs from Alaska (1) and Arizona (6), not due to scarcity, but because those parts of the collection were previously dispersed. Portraits taken in California make up about half of the collection, representing established photographers in big cities like San Francisco and Sacramento, as well as lesser-known photographers in sparsely populated mountain towns. The people of the frontier and post-frontier West posing in the portraits are mostly unidentified, though some images do have handwritten names and dates. The majority of people pictured are white, with a relatively small number of portraits of African American, Chinese, Latino, and Indigenous persons. Sitters are of all ages, seen in individual poses or in family groups, in various styles of clothing, hair, jewelry, props, and furniture. Images include soldiers, wedding portraits, mothers with babies, children, frontiersmen, workers with tools, dogs, and occasional outdoor images of buildings or people. This collection was amassed over 35 years and became the primary source material for Mautz's seminal reference work Biographies of Western Photographers (1997). The thousands of imprints, some elaborately illustrated, include the names of several female photographers, such as: Fannie Hoyt, Salt Lake City, Utah; Mrs. E. W. (Eliza) Withington, Ione City, California; and Mrs. C. Klostermann, Eureka, California.

    photCL 581

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    Cartes-de-visite by early commercial photographers in the Philippines

    Visual Materials

    A group of 10 carte-de-visite portraits taken in the1860s and 1870s in photography studios in Manila, Philippines. The unidentified sitters are Filipino, Chinese, and Spanish men, women and children, mostly in individual portraits, with one image of three Indigenous men posed with spears. Six images are credited to Pedro Picon (one dated 1867); the others have imprints for Fotografia Universal Manila, Honiss Fotografo Manila, H. Schuren, and W. W. Wood. These cartes-de-visite illustrate the early activities of commercial photography studios in the Philippines.

    photCL 721

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    California: Far north cities and towns; Traveling photographers

    Visual Materials

    Contains portraits from Colusa, Red Bluff, Chico, Orland, Ukiah, Ferndale, Lakeport, Eureka, Mendocino City, Fort Jones, Weaverville, Hayden Hill, Crescent City, Alturas, Yreka, Downieville. Several portraits from the C.C. Richardson family album, Chico and Richardson Springs, California. This binder also has cartes-de-visite by traveling photographers, who worked in temporary set-up studios or sometimes worked on railroad cars, moving from town to town. One image shows a group portrait of four men at a table, one with an accordion.

    photCL 581

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    Cartes-de-visite by early commercial photographers in the Philippines

    Visual Materials

    A group of 10 carte-de-visite portraits taken in the1860s and 1870s in photography studios in Manila, Philippines. The unidentified sitters are Filipino, Chinese, and Spanish men, women and children, mostly in individual portraits, with one image of three Indigenous men posed with spears. Six images are credited to Pedro Picon (one dated 1867); the others have imprints for Fotografia Universal Manila, Honiss Fotografo Manila, H. Schuren, and W. W. Wood. These cartes-de-visite illustrate the early activities of commercial photography studios in the Philippines.

    photCL 721

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    Carte-de-visite portraits of James Fenimore Cooper and family members

    Visual Materials

    Carte-de-visite studio portraits of American author James Fenimore Cooper (photPF 20815), his brother Levi Cooper (photPF 20816, 20818), and his sister Anna Cooper (photPF 20817), two photographers identified on cartes-de-visite versos: J.H. Abbott of Albany, New York (photPF 20815) and Higgins & Terril of Elyria, Ohio (photPF 20817).

    photPF 20815-20818